Okay. I seem to be surrounded by well-written books at the moment; the one I mentioned earlier, to be described when I finished it, has been shoved aside for the one I picked up this evening.
It is The Seventh Well, by Fred Wander.
From the book jacket:
"Fred Wander, who died in Vienna in 2006 at the age of ninety, was a survivor of some twenty concentration camps, but it was not until the death of his only daughter in 1970 that his recollections finally poured forth in this harrowing work of fiction, first published in East Germany."
The blurb calls the novel "a mezmerizing dance of death filled with eerily haunting melodies," and "one of our finest Holocast novels."
The first character/story is about Mendel the storyteller, and the young man who has asked to be taught how to tell stories.
'Mendel looked at me in alarm. "I see you didn't understand anything. I talk and talk, and you understand nothing. I never was in the place where he lived. Is that so important, the house, the particular house...There are hidden strengths in people, but the people don't know it. They wither away, and become crippled, but still life is pressing within them. And since their pores are blocked and their eyes are blind, and they don't know what to do with all their strength, they break out. They break out, and yes, they lash out as well..."'
Twenty pages on:
'From a farm across the street, a little girl watched the spectacle. The door was open behind her, and swathes of steam cam wafting out. Half hidden behind a tree, the girl watched the long column. She had her sleeves rolled up, her healthy red arms were steaming, the trough full of laundry was steaming at her feet. For an instant I was overcome by memories of the various smells of soap and clean shirts, bread and onions and barley coffee. It was good to know they still existed somewhere.'
But Wander does not mince words.
'That morning Bertrand Lederer from Charleroi died and Abram Larbaud from Montpelier, Efraim Bunzel from Prague died and Samuel Wechsberg from Lodz, and others died in the cars on either side of ours, whose names we never learned..The sky became steel-blue and deep, and only scattered little pink clouds smiled down, like innocent children.'
This is, very simply, an incredibly beautiful book.
